Nitrites still at 0 mg/l

New water test this afternoon, bad guys still at 0 mg/l. Normal amount of food provided. I'll check the water tomorrow morning again. The main problem is, I'm leaving on saturday for an entire week, and if the bacteria are gone, I'm in trouble. Best solution I could think of, no food for the entire next week. Which is surely OK for the archers, but the small ones?

Big mistake

Two days ago, while fiddling with the filter in order to change the water flow, in an attempt to understand what better fits the archers, I forgot the filter off. It stayed like that the whole night, and I found out in the morning, yesterday. The risk is, of course, that the aerobic bacteria in there all died. A quick water test in the afternoon showed ammonia still lower than detectable (<0.01 mg/l), but nitrites between 0.1 and 0.2 mg/l. Bad. Quick water change, more than 50%. No food.

Water test today, NO2 at 0 mg/l both in the morning and in the afternoon. Tiny amount of food provided.

OOOPS!

Wait a minute... I measured the water parameters, and it just CANNOT be that NO3 are down to less than 10 mg/l: the tap water contains almost 40! Then I recalled that the reagents of the test for NO2 and NO3 do have an expiration date: and that passed LONG AGO! Fortunately I have another package I bought time ago. Results: around 75 mg/l! Good enough that the bacteria are doing their dirty job, and NO2 are still at 0 mg/l.

The archers don't come out!

So, yep, after more than two weeks from the arrival of the rainbows and the Vallis, the archers are stubbornly hidden in the darkest corners of the mangroves: they keep staying there all day, even at feeding time, the only apparent exception being when the lights go off, when two (!) of them shyily come out to slowly munch the food the rainbows can't get, 'cause it floats or it's too big. The thing is, the two species do share pretty much the same hideouts, e.g. at night, and I never saw any evidence of direct distress caused by the rainbows to the archers: they simply peacefully pass in front of each other, like all well-educated fish should do. Still, this behaviour clearly started about 48 h after the Boesemani went in; the only other changes occurred during that time was that the water was slowly turned into fresh, in order to give an easier startup to the Vallis. I have also reduced the exposure to light, covering parts of the tank with black sheets of plastic, but to no avail. Another situation when the archers finally appear more confident, and indeed jump out of their hideout and go swimming below the filter output, is when I start changing the water, and the water level goes down: they always reacted in this way, and apparently still do, and I have no clue why.

The rainbows instead are just happy: the males are starting to get more colour, two of them in particular feature a stable orange rear half. Today morning I was at home, and before the lights turned on one of them was actually the long-term expected blue & red! I therefore took a few quick shots, shown below.

The striking colours shown before the lights went on today morning. Not bad for such a young specimen.

The same male with a female.

The two most forward males.

 

Updated layout

Here's a picture of the new aquascape, of which I'm not yet very satisfied. It just... doesn't look natural. I have added more hanging leaves, and more I have yet to add. The Vallis is experiencing the expected removal trauma, let's see if I can make it just LIVE.Three mangrove roots left.

The rainbows are doing quite fine, especially one of the females appears very confident. The archers, on the contrary, are shier than ever: they're spending the entire day hidden, and freak out as soon as I get close, histerically jumping or trying to go through the glass. They haven't really eaten in the past couple of days. I noticed that switching off the light will make them come out and eat a bit, though. I do have to decrease the amount of light, at least in certain parts of the tank; but now with all those plants around it's a bit complicate. Or else, I haved no idea what to do: I expected that the new neighbours would make the archers come out a bit more, but so far the opposite is happening.

First pics

Plants are set in, and I have the impression that some alage are starting to grow on them. I managed to anchor most of the stems using pieces of lead weights, but I had not enough, so a couple of them keep jumping up to the surface.

The rainbows are doing fine, although still quite scared: the first day it was impossible to even spot the males, whereas at least two of the three females were brave enough to have quick looks out of the protection of the roots. They eventually got most of the food: natural selection at work.... Today, day 3, they all jumped out as soon as food became available... They also appear to get along quite well with the archers....

Lost track of another glassfish. Yesterday it was impossible to see them around, today at least they were carefully swimming in the planted corner...

A couple of pics, nothing special, just eager to put the first shots in:

Beginning of a long companionship?

Big changes!

Today I have received the Vallisneria americana/asiatica. Three bunches, for a total of 10 plants, in good apparent conditions. The plan was to make a little forest in one of the corners, and finally release the remaining glassfishes, prisoners since about 7 months, and hoping that this will save them from the archers attentions.

One problem, still unresolved, is a good way of planting the Vallis: the crown should remain out of the substrate, and no sand allowed among the leaves. That is already quite hard to achieve, but after you trim a bit the roots to prepare the plant, there is no way the stem will remain in place into the substrate. So, at the moment I'm using some lead weights, but I don't have enough, and I'm not even sure the lead won't interfere with the water...

Glassfishes released, one of them panicked or so, hectically swimming vertically, like in convulsions, and inevitably attracted the attention of the closest archer: lifetime out of the nursery, about 30 sec. Not good. After that, the remaining ones (4) behaved, and to my amazement nothing happened: the archers somehow do look at them, but let them go. Better feed them regularly, though...

The other big news is, expecting the glassfishes not to last long (I still don't know how they will possibly catch food in such a large tank), I got 6 lovely Melanotenia boesemani. Beautiful. And I hope, once settled, they will take the archers out from their mangrove hideout. At the moment, it still looks like an empty tank: everybody hidden among the roots. But that's the idea of mangroves, I guess...